All Roads Lead Back to LeBron James

The Heat, the NBA's drab and reluctant villains, lost to Indiana last night. That puts the series at 2-1; the Pacers have taken away home court advantage, the Heat have proven how bad off they are without Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade was the goat for a change. It was a humiliating and crushing defeat, which isn't completely unheard of. Except in this case, it has a chilling effect on the series. And the outcome of this series is, like most things in life, about LeBron James.

LeBron James isn't just the NBA's best player or its most controversial. He is, like it or not, the only enduring question in the NBA. All roads lead back to LeBron; every young player feted is posited as a challenge to James, every team whose founding principles don't make stomachs curdle is an antidote to the Heat. I used to think that James was a threat to basketball because he could pretty much outmode it. He is that good, that versatile, that commanding. Instead, his career narrative has (as we saw starting in the summer of 2010) become bigger than the league itself. He's the NBA's supreme crossover story and yet does nothing to further interest in the rest of the sport or the game itself.

The unfortunate part of it all: LeBron's story as presently constructed isn't all that interesting. He needs to win a ring and until that happens, his career is pending review. It's not so different from all other stars who grew up in the shadow of Michael Jordan, except James has more talent than anyone, a team with two other elite players, and all sorts of vanity to sow rancor. It remains to be seen whether one title would simply lead to calls for a second, a third, and then a fourth (James himself promised at least as many at the pep rally that introduced him to Miami). The crux of it, though, remains that James is unfinished, maybe even counterfeit, until he gets that title. It's a formality, but one he needs for his accomplishments to be viewed for what they are. Three MVPs without a ring is...

The other side of this particularly narrow reading is the prismatic, dizzying varieties of LeBron-hate, an all-purpose mechanism by which everything James does received the least favorable interpretation possible. This comes especially easy if the Heat lose or James fails to produce. Even today, while Wade is getting some attention, the reason We Are All Pacers is because of LeBron. If they win and he shines, consider it a minor setback to the cause. There will be another ambiguous, imperfect quote, or in-game choice that involves some element of judgment, to glom onto. LeBron James is vulnerable as long as he doesn't win; exposed like this, he's open to any and all imaginable criticisms. Short of redeeming himself, it's the least he owes the fans of the sport. Otherwise, we're stuck with a singular preoccupation and no lively debate surrounding it. Hence the idle rage of minutiae that's come to define James in the public eye. He drives us to it, but it gives us license to say the most stupid, irrational things imaginable.

What makes last night's loss noteworthy is that, when you fire up the ol' microscope, James recedes in a way he rarely does. Dwyane Wade was absolutely putrid, not to mention the one challenging Coach Erik Spoelstra in a way that LeBron received a whole week of news cycle for during the 2010-11 regular season. Chris Bosh, maligned nearly as much as James since coming to Miami, turns out to be worth way more than most had considered. And the rest of the Heat looks worse than ever, raising the possibility that a supporting cast could be so lousy that even James, Wade, and Bosh couldn't elevate them. The team is deadly with one of the wings out, but minus Bosh, they lose any balance and suddenly all goes to shit.

How exactly, though, is a detailed study of Mike Miller and Shane Battier, or even Wade and Bosh, supposed to compete with LeBron James? James remains more, and less, compelling than everything else in basketball, including his own team. At this point, it's sometimes hard to remember he has anything at all to do with the sport as we know it.

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